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A Free Market Revolution
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10180 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1993 |
3,890 Words |
| Author
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John R. Guardiano
John R. Guardiano is a free-lance writer and consultant who
writes about foreign-aid and development issues. |
Far removed from the political intrigue and infighting in Moscow and from the penetrating glare of Western television cameras, a quiet revolution is taking place in Russia. It is a free market revolution more populist and extensive than the Russian Revolution of 1917 and, indeed, than any Marxist revolution the world has ever known.
Russian cities are awash with capitalism Russian-style, and it works--to a point. Russian consumers need goods, so Russian traders seek out producers who can provide them these goods. Thousands of entrepreneurially minded Russian traders have thus far emerged, and their number is growing rapidly by the day, so much so that, in the words of Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russia is becoming "a nation of small shopkeepers."
Street vendors exchange coveted Western goods for rubles, and rubles for dollars. Kiosks, self-enclosed, shacklike structures smaller than most Western newsstands, are the centerpieces of the new activity. Lining Russian streets like small houses, they sell an unpredictable assortment of Western goods, including soft drinks and soda, candy and gum, pots and pans, newspapers, cigarettes, liquor, batteries, tool kits, radios, clothing, even videocassettes of American movies (for which there is no Russian copyright protection).
But one would be hard pressed to know about this from reading Western press accounts, which have been fixated on the political crisis in Moscow. "Russian Reform under Attack," warns one headline. "Yeltsin, Opponents Reach Compromise but the Struggle Exacts a Political Toll," declares another. "Tough days ahead for Russia's Yeltsin," notes one newspaper solemnly; and "Bitter clashes erupt ahead of Russia's referendum," observes another.
Insofar as they are reporting on political developments in Russia, Western news reports are accurate enough; but the tumultuous political landscape in Russia is only half the story, if even that.
Indeed, for the new free market revolutionaries, "freedom," "justice," and "power to the people" are not simple rhetorical tools used to advance a selfish, factional political end; rather, they are live and dynamic ideas realized in an everyday commercial exchange of the kind we take for granted in the West. Property for them is not a heavy Russian anchor to which they are chained but rather the lifeboat that lifts them out of the stormy waves of poverty and despair, carrying them to the safe and secure shoals of free market
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